APPLICANT'S ABSTRACT: School-based drug abuse prevention programs that combine refusal skills training with social and personal competence enhancement have been shown to reduce adolescent drug and alcohol use. Etiology research has begun to clarify how the components of effective prevention programs work. Social competence appears to play a protective role by helping young people resist peer influences to use alcohol. Less is known about the role of personal competence skills in the etiology of adolescent alcohol use. Although research has shown that personal competence skills such as cognitive and behavioral self-management strategies are associated with less alcohol use among adolescents, the etiological mechanisms remain unclear. In addition, little is known about how personal competence skills protect youth from important risk factors for alcohol use, particularly youth in high-risk settings. Research has shown that rates of alcohol use differ among ethnic and gender subgroups of adolescents. Thus, it is important to determine whether competence-based etiological models can explain alcohol use among various subgroups of adolescents. A primary goal of the proposed research is to develop, test, and refine several etiologic models that focus on personal competence skills and adolescent alcohol use, and to examine these models among two longitudinal samples of middle school students: a predominantly white, suburban sample (N=3,549), and a largely minority, inner-city sample (N=2,229). This goal will be accomplished through secondary analysis of control group participants from two school-based drug abuse prevention trials. The proposed research aims to elucidate how personal competence skills influence the initiation and escalation of adolescent alcohol use. Mediational analyses will test the hypothesis that personal competence skills reduce alcohol use by enhancing psychological well-being or reducing distress; moderational analyses will test whether personal competence skills buffer the effects of other risk factors for alcohol use (e.g., peer influences). Models will be cross-validated among ethnic and gender subgroups, and differences in the prediction of experimental versus heavy alcohol use will be tested. The long-term goal is to improve our understanding of how alcohol use develops among youth of different backgrounds and to improve prevention intervention for ethnically diverse populations.